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As it happened: Victoria records two new cases as state's retail, hospitality restrictions lifted; NSW border decision to depend on Qld election as Australian death toll jumps to 907

Updated October 28, 2020 — 7:58pm,first published October 28, 2020 — 7:02am

Pinned post from 4.44pm on Oct 28, 2020

Confirmed Sydney case visited these six venues recently

By Matt Bungard

Multiple venues in western and south-western Sydney as well as one in Sydney’s east are the latest points of concern for COVID-19 risk.

NSW Health said that a confirmed case of COVID-19 visited six venues across the past few days.

Anyone who attended the following two venues on Sunday, October 25 at these specific times should consider themselves a close contact, and get tested immediately, and then isolate regardless of the result.

Flip Out Indoor Trampoline Park in Prestons between midday and 1.50pm
Jasmins Lebanese Restaurant in Liverpool between 2pm and 3.30pm

In addition, anyone who attended the following four places at the specific dates and times should consider themselves a casual contact, and monitor for symptoms.

Westfield Bondi Junction on Saturday, October 24 between 1.30pm and 4.30pm
Watsup Brothers kebab shop in Condell Park on Saturday, October 24 between 5.30pm and 6pm
Ali Baba Charcoal Chicken in Auburn, on Monday, October 26 between 1pm and 1.20pm
Carnes Hill Marketplace on Tuesday, October 27 between 3.30pm and 4.30pm

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7.58pm on Oct 28, 2020

The day in review

By Rachael Dexter

And that's it for another day of our live coronavirus blog. Thanks for reading.

Here's a quick summary of what happened today:

Melbourne celebrated its first day out of stage four lockdown, with cafes, restaurants and all retail re-opening for the first time in 112 days. There were two new cases of virus recorded, but both were people already in isolation as part of the northern metro outbreak.
It was confirmed that Melbourne would host the Boxing Day Test against India but the Australian Open emerged as more problematic.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she would be issuing invoices next week to all states and territories for the cost of processing their citizens in hotel quarantine, the cost of which is expected to hit $140 million by the end of the year. The state recorded just one new local coronavirus case, in a household contact of an existing case linked to the Lakemba GP's cluster.
Multiple federal government MPs and state politicians along the Victorian border, along with Qantas and other transport operators, called on the NSWales government to allow Victorians unfettered access to the state. But Premier Gladys Berejiklian maintained her reticence to opening the border to Victoria before the full effects of eased restrictions were known.
In Queensland, a positive result for viral fragments of COVID-19 in Ipswich sewage sparked fears there might be undetected cases in the city, and urgent calls for residents to get tested.
The United States reported a record of more than 500,000 new coronavirus cases in the past week.
That's it from me - Rachael Dexter - this evening. Stay safe, and goodnight.

7.50pm on Oct 28, 2020

NSW needs more quarantine hotels to deal with COVID-19 infected overseas arrivals

By Lucy Cormack and Pallavi Singhal

NSW is considering increasing the number of quarantine "health hotels" after a sharp increase in the number of overseas travellers arriving with COVID-19.

The development comes as the NSW government threatened to send states and territories a bill to cover quarantine costs, which is expected to hit $140 million by the end of the year.

The Premier also maintained her reticence to reopening the border to Victoria before the full effects of eased restrictions were known.

She said "everybody is on tenterhooks as to whether there will be a third wave and how will Victoria cope with that."

Any further outbreak in Victoria could potentially see the border opening delayed until after Christmas.

New Health figures reveal the number of cases being detected in hotel quarantine has more than doubled since early October, with an average five cases now detected every day.

Read more here.

7.42pm on Oct 28, 2020

'The first tables I served wanted champagne': Melbourne's CBD re-opens

By Rachel Eddie

As the day draws to an end, this story from city reporter Rachel Eddie summarises of the vibe in Melbourne today...

Pellegrini's Espresso Bar was slinging watermelon granitas on Wednesday as Melbourne defrosted from 15 weeks of strict lockdown.

Customers eating at Pellegrini's Espresso Bar for the first time in months.Joe Armao

But the view down Bourke Street was not quite normal, with no clear deadline for office workers to return to the CBD. Still, shoppers were back and small business owners were optimistic about the sunny months ahead.

Regular customers made sure to visit Pellegrini’s on its first day open in months, owner David Malaspina said.

"We haven't had an empty shop yet. There's always been a trickle of people coming in. It's just been lovely," said Mr Malaspina, son of former co-owner Sisto.

"The doors are open, the coffee's flowing. It's a positive day, it's a good day."

Pellegrini’s did not bother staying open for takeaway during stage four restrictions, and Mr Malaspina found the empty city "so disheartening".

"Our beautiful city of marvellous Melbourne, it was just like a ghost town … We’re in the people industry. We miss the people, we miss the contact. When you come here and the streets are empty, it’s really hard," he said.

"It’s nice to get that enthusiasm back, and we get that with the customers coming in today. They come in and they clap and they, ‘Yay!’ It’s just so lovely."

Read Rachel's full story here.

7.31pm on Oct 28, 2020

MP-led inquiry to investigate contact tracing 'failures'

By Sumeyya Ilanbey and Paul Sakkal

A parliamentary inquiry chaired by Reason Party MP Fiona Patten will investigate Victoria's COVID-19 contact tracing system and how it performed during the deadly second wave.

Upper house MPs passed a motion on Wednesday afternoon to establish the inquiry, with a report due by December 14.

A parliamentary inquiry will examine Victoria's contact tracing system.Jason South

Opposition health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier, who moved the motion, said the second wave of COVID-19 cases occurred only because contact tracers were not able to stem the virus' spread once it seeped out of quarantine hotels.

Ms Crozier said the inquiry would examine the contact tracing system, which was not within the scope of Justice Jennifer Coate's examination of the hotel quarantine scheme.

"This is a really important inquiry," Ms Crozier said.

"Never before has Victoria had such a huge devastation … This parliamentary inquiry will get to the bottom of some of those failures that have occurred.

"We need to get it right and give Victorians the confidence that contact tracing is fixed."

Ms Patten said she wanted to ensure the state had the best system possible.

"It is my hope that this inquiry will give the public and business confidence that as we open up, we will stay open," she said.

Read the full story here.

6.55pm on Oct 28, 2020

Coles boss crosses fingers for speedy recession recovery

By Dominic Powell

Coles boss Steven Cain remains hopeful of a quick return to economic growth as the supermarket giant unwrapped one of its highest-ever quarterly sales figures, buoyed by COVID-19 lockdowns.

Sales across the company shot up 10.4 per cent for the three months to the end of September, helped along by locked-down Victoria where spending has remained elevated. The figure marks Coles' second-highest quarterly result since 2007.

Coles CEO Steve Cain said he expected the supermarket would continue to post solid sales figures for the next few months before hitting the "panic-buying wall" in March, where sales will start to be compared against the spikes seen earlier this year.Arsineh Houspian

Mr Cain said he was gunning for a "short, sharp" recession, responding to comments from Reserve Bank deputy governor Guy Debelle on Tuesday that it appeared that Australia's economy grew through the September quarter.

"If Australia comes out of the recession fastest and first, that's incredibly good news for us," he said.

"But I think underneath the surface you have to look at what's happening across the spectrum because in amongst it all, there will still be a number of unemployed people that we need to make sure we're delivering for."

Read full story here.

6.47pm on Oct 28, 2020

Vaccine is imminent, but virus fight has long way to go: Fauci tells Melbourne

By Adam Carey

America's top infectious disease expert predicts the world will have a coronavirus vaccine "in the next few months", but says people are unlikely to be able to go about their normal lives until at least the end of next year.

"I think it will be easily by the end of 2021 and perhaps into the next year before we start having some semblance of normality," Dr Anthony Fauci told a Melbourne audience on Wednesday.

Dr Anthony Fauci speaking at a University of Melbourne webinar on the global response to COVID-19.

"If normal means you can get people in a theatre without worrying about what we call congregate-setting super infections, if we can get restaurants to open almost at full capacity ..."

But the director of the United States' National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said stubborn anti-vaxxer beliefs, political division and the self-interested meddling of politicians would all make the job of immunising the world against COVID-19 tougher.

Masks, for example, had become a political symbol in the US, Dr Fauci said.

"People were ridiculed for wearing masks; it depended on what side of the political spectrum you were at, which was so painful to me as a public health scientist."

Speaking from his US home as part of a University of Melbourne webinar, Dr Fauci – recently called an idiot by President Donald Trump – said scientists must never be afraid to tell politicians what they don't want to hear.

Read the full story here.

6.44pm on Oct 28, 2020

Seven cases drop off Victoria's active case total

By Rachael Dexter

It's a nice task to update this graph each day that plots Victoria's active case numbers. As you can see in more detail in the bottom graph that line continues a downward slope, with seven cases falling off the total today bringing us to 80 active cases.

What do we know about these remaining 80 cases?

80 are in metropolitan Melbourne (-5 since yesterday) and zero are in regional Victoria (-2)
Six are healthcare workers (-1)
Three are related to aged care facilities (-1)
23 are part of the northern metro region community outbreak (+1)
Four are part of the Eastern Health Box Hill Hospital outbreak (-1)

6.11pm on Oct 28, 2020

Watch how regional Victoria made it to zero active cases

By Craig Butt

As of today there are no longer any active coronavirus cases in regional Victoria, Department of Health and Human Services data shows.

This is the first time since the Department started publishing data on the location of the state’s active cases that regional Victoria has dropped to zero active infections.

Its previous record was just the one active case in late June, but when the second wave of infections started to radiate out from Melbourne the area ended up reaching a peak of 518 active cases in mid-August.

When you click play on this animated map, you can see how COVID-19 seeped into almost every local government area in Victoria during the second wave and how infection numbers started to come down from mid-August.

5.41pm on Oct 28, 2020

US records 500,000 new cases in one week

By New York Times

Keeping overseas for a moment...

The United States has reported a record of more than 500,000 new coronavirus cases over the past week, as states and cities resorted to stricter measures to contain the virus that is raging across the country, especially the American heartland.

The record was broken Tuesday, even as the Trump administration announced what it called its first-term scientific accomplishments, in a press release that included "ENDING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC" written in bold, capital letters.

The record reflects how quickly the virus is spreading. It took nearly three months for the first 500,000 coronavirus cases to be tallied in the United States — the first was confirmed January 21, and the country did not reach the half-million mark until April 11.

Testing was severely limited in the early days of the pandemic.

The new restrictions range from a nightly business curfew in Newark, New Jersey, to a two-week stay-at-home order in El Paso, Texas, to a halt in indoor dining in Chicago.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker announced Tuesday that he was stopping indoor dining and bar service in Chicago, effective at 12:01am Friday, as the city averages more than twice as many coronavirus-related hospital admissions per day as it was a month ago.

People walk by outdoor plastic dining bubbles on Fulton Market in Chicago.Nam Y. Huh (AP)

The city joins New York and Wisconsin, states that earlier this month issued restrictions or outright bans on indoor dining in restaurants and bars to limit the spread of the virus.

The restrictions have been loudly opposed by a restaurant industry that has been decimated by the pandemic.

The US has reported a record daily average of about 71,000 new cases over the past week, an increase of about 40 per cent from the average two weeks earlier.

Eighteen states, including Illinois, have recorded their highest seven-day average of new cases, and three states (Tennessee, Wisconsin and Oklahoma) have set a record seven-day average for deaths.

On Tuesday, Oklahoma and Wyoming broke single-day death records and Kentucky reported a new daily cases record.

5.33pm on Oct 28, 2020

Merkel wants to close all bars, restaurants across Germany to halt virus spread

By Reuters

Well as Melbourne celebrates its first day of restaurants and cafes re-opening, in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel is planning to close all hospitality venues from next week.

Chancellor Merkel wants a meeting with state leaders on Wednesday to agree to close all restaurants and bars from November 4 in a bid to curb coronavirus infections but keep schools and nurseries open, newspaper Bild has reported.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives at the federal parliament in Berlin on Tuesday.Michael Kappeler (AP)

It cited a draft resolution as showing Merkel wanted the 16 premiers of the states to agree to close fitness studios, casinos and cinemas along with theatres, opera houses and concert venues but allow shops to remain open if they implement hygiene measures and limit customer numbers.

Restaurants would only be allowed to offer customers takeaways, it said.

The report said the federal government wanted to provide financial aid to firms affected by closures, adding that a concept for this would be presented later on Wednesday.

It also said that people should only be able to go out in public with members of their own household and one other household. It said people would be punished if they did not respect that but did not give further details.

The report said only "necessary and specifically non-tourist" stays overnight would be allowed.
Germany, widely praised for keeping its infection rate well below other major powers in the initial phase of the crisis, now faces a faster than expected surge in cases, with the latest data from Tuesday showing cases increased by 11,409 to 449,275.

Merkel warned on Tuesday that Germany's health system could hit breaking point if coronavirus infections continue to spiral and Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said Germany was likely to reach 20,000 new infections a day by the end of the week.